Mark James Russell

Books, blog and other blather

Category: Korean media

At last — Pop Goes Korea is back!

July 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments

PGK2

Okay, so this took a few months longer than I expected last fall. But at least, Pop Goes Korea (2nd Edition) is out and for sale.

The new version is 10,000 or so words longer than the old one, with all sorts of updates throughout. In addition to updates to each chapter, I’ve also added essays about Korean indie music, another about classic rock, a followup Q&A with Sean Yang (founder of Soribada) and a new Q&A with Dami Lee, the web cartoonist.

Best of all, the 2nd edition is also a lot cheaper, for $4.99 on the US Amazon site.

Oh, but all the photos are gone. Sorry, but I didn’t want the hassle of dealing with all those photo rights all over again. And, besides, this is the internet age, so I assumed people could just search and find all the photos they wanted for any subject.

For now, it is only available as an ebook at Amazon, but I am planning to upload it to all the major ebook sites soon enough.

Okay, it is a bit of an old book for such a high-turnover, constantly changing topic. But I think it holds up fairly well (and there really is nothing else that covers the same territory in English). And for the occasional student of pop culture, hallyu or modern Korea, I thought it would be useful to have my book easily available.

Thanks to all who read the original edition, and to those who are interested in the new one. I really appreciate your time, and I hope you find the new version interesting and useful.

 

 

Wednesday morning links

September 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments

A few links and notes today:

  • 77-year-old gayageum master Hwang Byung-gi (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • Another branch of Seoul Museum of Art has opened, this one in the north of the city, in Nowon District (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • T-Ara, Davichi and other K-pop acts went to Mongolia and played for nearly 20,000 people in Ulaanbaatar. That’s kind of amazing. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • Face Reader had an awesome Chuseok, including a 900,000 admissions Saturday (nearly a record). After two weeks in theaters, Face Reader now has 7.1 million admissions, and has made 52 billion won ($47 million). (Numbers from KOBIS, of course).
  • From yesterday, here is my review of Andrei Lankov’s The Real North Korea. Excellent overview of North Korea. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • I can’t get enough of stories piling on former dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Now he’s been forced to give back the medals he awarded himself in the 1980s. (Chosun Ilbo)
  • A Pyongyang amusement park has gotten a “4-D” movie theater. (Chosun Ilbo)

Morning Links

August 6, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Since I am apparently dumping a bunch of fun links over on my Twitter feed, I thought I would repeat them here for the (wise) folks who don’t bother with Twitter:

  • 2 million North Koreans have mobile phones these days (Chosun Ilbo). It’s kind of amazing how quickly that is growing:
In 2008, North Korea set up Koryolink with Orascom. The number of subscribers stood at only 1,600 in the first year but rose to 100,000 in 2009, 500,000 in May 2011 and a million a year later.
  • Foreign currency (mostly US dollars and yuan) surges in North Korean economy. Now 10% of NK’s economy (Chosun Ilbo)
  • This story about singer-turned-actress Nam Gyu-ri story was hard to get right. She called herself a 변태, which usually is translated as “pervert.” But that language struck some people in the newsroom as too strong and loaded, so we finally decided to go with “weirdo” (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • A reminder Aug. 14 is the start of the Jecheon Film & Music Festival. A lot of my friends in the entertainment business think Jecheon’s combination of music and movies make it the best fest in Korea (JIMFF website)
  • I think this is turning into a really interesting year for K-pop. The quality of the music just keeps rising. At the moment, one of my favorite songs is Junsu’s “Incredible” (just a really fun tune):

Korean History, Live and Online (and some random food notes)

May 21, 2009 / / 1 Comment

For some research I was doing recently, I ran across the most amazing resource online — a huge collection of photos and videos about Korea, dating from the 1950s to the present. Some are old news stories, others are government propaganda videos, and others are, well, I have no idea.

I’m talking about E-History website, run by KTV (Korea Policy Broadcasting?). For the video section especially, you can spend countless hours, just skipping around and browsing. Sadly, the site is only in Korean, but it is pretty easy to navigate, even for beginners.

There are 11 categories running down the left side, for politics, economics, military, society, eduction, culture and more. Below those categories, the site is also organized by decade. And because all the videos have been indexed and described, the search engine works surprising well.

Here is a sampling of some interesting videos related to movies and culture:
– Old movie theaters from 1957.
– Television starts in Korea in 1956, thanks to RCA.
– More about Korea’s first TV station HLKZ, from 1956.
– AFKN from 1959.
– Opening of KBS headquarters in 1976.
– Some movie awards from 1959. Includes clips of Yu Hyun-mok (the famous director) and Choi Eun-hee (the great actress and wife of the late Shin Sang-ok).
– The first Best Korean Movie Awards in 1962. With awards going to Shin Sang-ok (for Romantic Papa) and Kim Ki-young (for The Housemaid) and Choi Eun-hee.
– The first Grand Bell Movie Awards, a few months later in 1962.
– Grand Bell Movie Awards from 1990. Features Kang Su-yeon winning an award, lots of really bad hair and shoulder pads.
– A report on Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee in North Korea from 1984 (with plenty of Bukgoe comments throughout).
– Sadly I could not find much interesting about old rock music. Did find this 1963 video about singer Lee Chun-hee.

And just some random stuff I liked:
– A golf tournament from 1954.
– Namdaemun devastated by a fire in 1954 (wow, deja vu).
– Yonsei’s Severance Hospital back in 1962.
– Yonsei University’s 80th anniversary.
– Korean boxer Yu Jae-du beating Koichi Wajima for the WBA Light Middleweight Champion belt in 1975 (Yuh Jae-doo?).
– A video from 1970 talking about Korea’s next five-year plan and how Korea would develop in the future.
– The opening of the Yanghwa bridge connecting Mapo and Yeongdeungpo in 1965.
– The opening of the Seoul Sanga Apartments in Chungmuro in 1967.
– Namsan Wayne Apartments being destroyed in 1994
– Don’t leave your nasty gum around, from 1990.
– Miss Korea 1957. Includes the swimsuit competition.

Okay, you get the idea. I could do this for days, but those selections should get you started. What a great website.

UPDATE: Given how popular Kim Yuna is these days, I thought people might want to check out these skating videos:
– Skating in 1955. Around 1 minute in, we get some figure skating, too. They could be the ancestors of Kim Yuna (metaphorically, that is).
– Rhee Sungman taking in some skating on the Han River in 1958 (including some more figure skating).
– 1959, more speed skating and figure skating (and the figure skaters are getting a little better). (Oh, love the spelling of “sports” in this one. 스포오쯔… never seen that before).
– Ice fishing and ice hockey from 1961 on this one.
– Skating at Gyeongbok Palace in 1963.
– Skating at the Dongdaemun Ice Rink, which I never knew existed, in 1964.
– Ice Carnival at the Dongdaemun rink in 1964. Including a talented little 6-year-old, Yoon Hyo-jin (who went on to finish 17th at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck).

* * *

A couple of random restaurant notes. Seems like every time I turn around, new Indian restaurants are popping up all over the place. I talked about Manokamana before (which now seems to be doing very well, as I can never get a seat there).

But if you cannot get a seat at Manokamana, there is another option just down the street — Amma. Amma is just as good as Manokamana, if not better (I think the portions are bigger), and it is dead quiet. The furniture is a little odd (like out of a 1995 Korean dabang, but don’t let that throw you). It is right behind the Hyundai Department Store. Map here. Totally worth checking out.

If you are looking for more of a Western bar experience, a new place just opened up in Shinchon that I also recommend called Beer O’Clock. Beer O’Clock has a good selection of beers (including Alley Cat Pale Ale), your basic bar food (which I have not tried yet, but looks good), and a great ambiance. It is on the second floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows that all open up, making almost every seat in the place a window seat.

I have not been there on a weekend yet, so maybe the vibe changes then. Hopefully not, but I do not know. But for a quite, comfortable mid-week place, Beer O’Clock was really good. Easily the best Western bar in Shinchon. Map.

* * *

UPDATE: Random note. As I write this post, my blog is the 10th most popular in the world under the Google search “distressed bondage.” Sometimes I do not understand the Internet at all.

Pop Wars and Economic Skirmishes (and Random Ramblings)

December 8, 2008 / / 1 Comment

Hard to say if the global economic downturn is affecting Korea’s media market much: popular sentiment here was already pretty dismal, long before Wall Street started to crash and burn.

Even during the record-breaking days of 2006, many producers complained that all the money was just going to a couple of big hits and that average films were being hammered. Which I always found a pretty crazy argument. You’re telling me movie attendance can go from 42 million to 160 million in 10 years, but business is bad?

Then when attendance declined in 2007 and this year, the industry really got scared. A lot of apocalyptic talk. Producers trying to move into theatrical musicals (the big growth field in the Korean cultural industry these days). You would think it was the end of days.

So far, though, I have not heard about any interesting projects being canceled because of financing problems (key word, “interesting”). Sure, Park Kwang-hyun’s FIST got the axe (along with the entire Motion 101 production company), but that was a most unusual situation (who knows what is going on with parent company Orion?). Plus, I would argue, the movie did not look very interesting.

In fact, from what I can see, there are a lot of interesting projects proceeding quite nicely. All too early to talk about, but there is still plenty of ambition and creativity in the pipeline. And it seems that there is still plenty of foreign money ready to come into Korea. Not in the form of presales, like a few years ago, but for investing and co-productions.

So the biggest problem remains that same problem that the industry has had for several years — developing new talent. There is no problem finding financing for the Park Chan-wooks and Kim Jee-woons of this world. Where life is toughest is for the budding talents trying to make a name for themselves. The new blood that is so needed to keep an industry fresh and full of life.

  • And to give you an idea how much things are changing, you now have movies and short videos being made just for mobile players (DMB phones, those hand-held screens you see on the subway). Sure, there is no money in that yet, and no one has made a project for mobile that has been a big hit. But it is certainly a sign that yet another medium in Korea is being transformed by the digital age.
  • Just to give you some statistics… According to the latest box office report by CJ CGV (no link, sorry), attendance is well off this year from the last two years — through November, Korea had 134.9 million admissions, down from 141.5 million last year and 150.4 from the record-breaking 2006. That is down 10 percent over the past two years.

    But what is really interesting to me is where attendance is down. For example, Seoul attendance is down only slightly from 2006, and actually up a little from last year. It is the countryside where attendance has plummeted.

    Not coincidentally, local movie attendance is way down (since the countryside is much more interested in Korean films than Seoul is) — 98.5 million admissions in the first 11 months of 2006, but 56.8 million this year. That’s a plunge of 42.3 percent. Yikes.

  • Btw, for all you screen quota fans out there, even with the plunge, Korean films have still accounted for over 42 percent of all admissions this year, still above the old quota’s 40 percent. So no blaming the reduction of the screen quota on the industry’s current mess.
  • Btw 2, according to KOBIS, there have been 91 Korean films released this year. About the same as the last couple of years. I am surprised, though, because the story I heard earlier in the year was that many fewer films had been made and released in 2008. Certainly in the first half of the year, very few Korean films were released. I guess they caught up since the summer. Or maybe KOBIS is not accurate. I need to find someone to explain this to me better.
  • Only one South Korean film at Sundance in January (at least in the competitive sections):

    Old Partner/South Korea (Director: Chung-ryoul Lee) – A humble octogenarian farmer lives out his final days with his spitfire wife and his loyal old ox in the Korean countryside. North American Premiere.

  • What’s this rumor I heard about a prominent producer taking the money and running? I just called his/her office and the phones were working and the employees were coming in (so the worst stories are untrue). But if it is basically true, it is kind of amazing. I just hope things work out for the employees there.
  • Hong Sang-soo will be one of the three filmmakers making a digital short film for the Jeonju International Film Festival this year.
  • Lately, I have been spending far more time than I would like in Seoul’s trendy Gangnam district. But one thing I have been pleasantly surprised by is the number of Indian and ethnic restaurants there. Definitely a good sign for Korea, that it is getting more and more diverse restaurants. Heck, there is an Indian restaurant around the corner from my house (which is not, I assure you, in a hip neighborhood at all).
  • On the other hand, could there be more coffee shops down in Gangnam? Four Coffee Beans just on this one stretch of road by the subway station. Plus all the Starbucks, Twosome Places, Tom & Tom’s, etc… Crazy.

    • Naver Say Naver Again…

    July 23, 2007 / / 1 Comment

    Hey, for the first time, the Korean Internet world seems to have noticed my presence. Very exciting. And rather unexpected.

    If I may explain… On Friday, I will be giving a presentation at Kyung Hee University, as part of some seminar and other things in a day of Hallyu (the Korean Wave). The university asked us presenters to write a little paper, basically going over what we will talk about at the seminar. No big deal, was happy to do it.

    But apparently the university gave out copies of our papers to the local press… trying to stir up interest in their event, I guess. In any event, this morning I started getting phone calls from some friends and acquaintances in the entertainment industry, asking about the mean things I had written.

    My first response was “Huh?”… partly because it takes a while for my brain to get moving in the morning, and partly because I had not expected the press to take an interest in my little paper. But mostly because I wrote a fairly positive story about the local entertainment biz.

    So I hit the Internet and found a couple of stories. The worst was definitely the Segye Ilbo, who totally misunderstood what I wrote. And (surprise, surprise) did not bother contacting me. Niiiice. Very professional. Granted, I gave my paper a cheeky little title (“The Zombie Wave”), but not for any special reason… because I could not think of a decent title and because I was just joking around.

    In any event, where there is news, there is a Naver discussion (Thanks to the Marmot for pointing it out to me). As of 11pm, there were over 1,200 comments… Rather remarkable, especially for little old me. It was mostly the usual Naver mix of complaining, joking and what not, but I was surprised how many people seemed sympathetic to what I said (even though much of it was taken out of context).

    FYI, for any Naver or Newsis or other folk dropping by, my presentation is mostly about how the Korean Wave and Korean pop culture has been perceived by the Western media. It is much more a critique of Western journalism in Korea than it is an analysis of Korean pop culture.

    FYI2, I am not American. I write for American magazines, but I am not American. Not that there is anything wrong with that…

    PS: Hi Mikstipe. Nice blog… and thanks for the kind words.

    Korea’s Communication History

    June 13, 2007 / / 0 Comments

    While doing research for a story, I just accidentally ran across KT’s history of communications in Korea, as part of the company’s Korea Telecom Museum. And I must say, it is one of the most fascinating websites I have run across in ages. It begins with some general stuff about early communication systems in Korea (like Fire Beacons, runners and antennae to the gods), then moves on to things like Korea’s first radio, Korea’s first TV station, and first coin-operated phones. Hours of good stuff there.

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